Setting anti-GCC letter writer straight

I read the recent letter to the editor in the News-Press, “GCC should dispense with its empires” (by Trent Sanders, Sept.18), with great excitement. As the new staff development officer at Glendale Community College, it seems, according to Sanders, that I head an office “with scads of costly ‘programs’ to make life comfortable for the teachers and administrators.”

I wish I knew where they were hidden.

Our current budget to provide training for all faculty, staff and administrators from July 1, 2012, to June 31, 2013, is $19,200.

With this money we will fund an annual Classified retreat, support the 14 academic divisions on campus so they can hold retreats geared toward improving education, partially reimburse members of the GCC campus for classes they have taken to improve their skills, support the Social Sciences Lecture series, the One Book One Glendale initiative, the Science lecture series, and to try and coordinate a staff development program to help all members of campus become more familiar and effective with the new emerging technologies that are the reality of education.

All this with $19,200, the smallest budget for staff development since I started working on this campus 25 years ago.

There are no expensive programs, hidden secret accounts, massive misappropriations of funds, or anything else suggested in this absurd piece of editorial fiction.

In closing, I simply hope that someone who writes a letter can get the basic facts right. I expect it of my students, and I expect it of our citizens.

Roger Bowerman
Thousand Oaks